


that look in your eyes (is so familiar a gleam)

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [2]
Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Dreams vs. Reality, Episode: s01e05 The Bent-Neck Lady, F/F, Gen, Ghosts, Manipulation, Missing Scene, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26952205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: “I’m so sorry to be rude,” Olivia says, setting her cup down on the small table between their chairs and bringing her legs up onto the cushion, “but have we met before?”In response, the woman laughs, the sound bright and loud and sharp at the edges, props her chin on her hand, and cranes over, smiling at Olivia like she’s just watched an animal perform some kind of trick.“Poor doll, youmustbe tired,” she murmurs sympathetically. “Of course we’ve met before. I’m-”(or, on one of the nights where the Bent-Neck Lady appears to Nellie, Olivia has a visitor of her own.)
Relationships: Eleanor "Nell" Crain & Olivia Crain, Olivia Crain/Poppy Hill
Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956031
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25
Collections: Ladies Bingo 2020





	that look in your eyes (is so familiar a gleam)

**Author's Note:**

> written for the 'midnight' square on my [Ladies Bingo 2020](https://ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org/) bingo card. this is a missing/alternate scene that takes place during episode 5. there's not much in here (besides a child in distress) that warrants the T rating, but it felt too weird rating it G, so here we are.
> 
> title from [Once Upon a Dream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8waJ7W3QcJc) (I've linked to the Lana Del Rey version, because it's creepy).

Even long past midnight, Hill House still feels alive with activity. 

As Olivia walks to her reading room with a cup of tea in one hand and a well-thumbed volume of short stories in the other, she marvels at how the house, unlike any other house they’ve moved into, continually makes its presence known. The floorboards creak out a symphony underneath her feet, no matter how lightly she steps. The air is thick with the smell of wood, as if each strip of it was installed mere moments, instead of a century, ago. The temperature varies with each step that she takes – in some patches, the air is pleasant, like being submerged in a warm, soothing bath, while in others, it is downright frigid. When she leans against a wall in order to keep her balance while she adjusts her grip on her book, she can almost feel a _thrumming_ against her skin, as if, on the other side of the wall, there are veins and arteries busily supplying the house with blood and power. 

Some days, particularly the days where there is a migraine pounding at her temples and spreading black across her eyes, she finds the house’s sheer force of will to be discomfiting at best and exhausting at worst. But on a night like tonight, where she can’t sleep and the wind is lashing at the windows, she welcomes the additional company, even if it isn’t exactly the conventional type. 

As she turns the corner into the hallway that leads to her reading room, she pauses for a moment. The door is half-open, emanating a warm glow of lamplight that reaches out into the hall like a welcome banner. She is fairly certain that she wasn’t up here today – she spent most of the day hunched over the plans for the house, trying to decipher the many secrets contained within – and if she _was_ up here, she wouldn’t have left the lamps on. After a moment of trying to recall with certainty, she continues onward – it’s all too possible that one of the kids was grabbing a book before bed and forgot to turn the light off. She’ll ask them about it in the morning. 

Carefully raising her mug to her lips and taking a small sip of lemon balm tea, she steps into the room, whereupon she pauses again. 

There is a woman sitting in her armchair, staring at her. 

She’s younger than Olivia, and she looks like she’s stepped out of a time machine or come fresh from a costume ball. Everything from the set of her auburn curls to the narrow headband crossing her forehead to the fit of her mint-green silk dress looks like a holdover from the 1920’s. She looks comfortable in the chair, as if she’s been there for ages, and the smile curling up her painted lips looks almost delighted. 

Olivia has never seen her before. 

That being said, for a moment, she is overwhelmed by the feeling that _she_ is the one who doesn’t belong in the room, that she is the one who is intruding into the woman’s space. But before she can take a step backwards, the woman waves a hand at the other chair in the room, arranged at a diagonal to the armchair she is occupying. 

“Sit down, sugar,” she says in a syrupy voice. “You look dog-tired.” As she says it, Olivia becomes aware that the strange woman is right. Exhaustion is blanketing her shoulders with such intensity that her knees sag under the weight of it. 

“I am,” she responds, trying to steady her mug so that she doesn’t spill on the carpet as she walks across the room. “I’m so tired. I… I don’t think that I’ve been sleeping well lately.” In response, the woman gives her a closed-mouth smile. It’s a soothing expression, and as Olivia settles into her chair in the nick of time, legs wobbly underneath her, it feels rude to question the woman about who she is. She doesn’t appear to mean Olivia any harm; rather, she looks totally content to sit in the other chair and smile and keep her company through the dark night. 

But asking the woman her name would at least allow Olivia to address her properly, would allow her to think of the woman as something other than… well, something other than simply _the woman_. 

“I’m so sorry to be rude,” she says, setting her cup down on the small table between their chairs and bringing her legs up onto the cushion, “but have we met before?”

In response, the woman laughs, the sound bright and loud and sharp at the edges, props her chin on her hand, and cranes over, smiling at Olivia like she’s just watched an animal perform some kind of trick. 

“Poor doll, you _must_ be tired,” she murmurs sympathetically. “Of course we’ve met before. I’m-”

Suddenly, the reading room and the woman are both gone. They don’t fade away or disappear in a swirl of mist – they are simply gone.

Instead, Olivia is lying down, staring up into the dark depths of the living room. Her head is throbbing faintly, and her back is stiff and aching in half a dozen different spots. She blinks once, twice, three times, expecting her surroundings to change at any given second, but when she stops, she’s still on the living room floor, covered by a thin blanket that doesn’t block out the chill of the room. 

Now she remembers. 

She remembers Nellie and her fear of the Bent-Neck Lady. She remembers volunteering to stay with her in the living room. It wasn’t supposed to be for longer than a few minutes, just until Nellie drifted off, but based on the stiffness of her joints and the heaviness of her eyes, she must have been asleep for a few hours. 

Of course she’s in the living room. Where else would she be? 

Carefully, she sits up, blanket pooling in her lap, and looks over at Nellie, expecting to see her eyes closed and her mouth slack, peaceful and quiet.

Instead, in the moonlight coming through the towering windows, she can see that Nellie’s eyes are painfully wide. Her bottom lip is trembling, and her chest is heaving violently. She’s making a tiny sound, a strangled whimper in the back of her throat, and she’s staring up into the darkness. 

For a moment, Olivia thinks that she sees something floating above Nellie, something long and black and wispy at the edges, like early morning fog. It’s visceral enough that she feels goosebumps spring up on her arms and legs, but when she blinks again, the _something_ , if it was ever there at all, is gone. There’s nothing floating in the air but copious amounts of dust, disturbed by their renovations. It was probably nothing more than her tired mind conspiring with the moonlight to play a trick on her eyes.

But Nellie still looks utterly petrified. 

“Sweetheart,” she says, throwing her blanket off and moving over to sit on the edge of the couch. “Honey, it’s okay. I’m right here. There’s nothing there. Look.” She waves a hand through the air above Nellie.

Instead of being soothed, Nellie screams at the top of her lungs. It’s not the scream that sometimes comes out of her when her siblings tease her a little bit too much or take a joke too far. It’s not a scream of pain either; it’s utterly dissimilar to the scream that she made last year when she dropped a large can of soup on her pinky toe and broke it. 

It’s nothing less than total terror distilled into a sound that makes Olivia feel completely and utterly powerless. She would do anything to make that sound stop, _anything_ to help her poor daughter conquer whatever is tormenting her in the dark.

For the time being, she knows that the living room is no longer a place of safety, so she scoops Nellie up into her arms and holds her tightly to her chest as she leaves the room behind. Nellie’s scream trails off into another whimper that she buries into Olivia’s shoulder, and her small arms wrap around her neck as tight as a vice. 

“You touched her,” she whispers, her breath hot against Olivia’s throat. “You touched the Bent-Neck Lady.” 

“It’s okay,” Olivia says, gently rubbing Nellie’s back. “It was just a bad dream.” 

“It _wasn’t!_ She was there!” Nellie retorts, her voice watery, and moments later, Olivia feels tears burning down her skin and soaking into her nightgown. Nellie’s whole body heaves with the force of her sobs, and her grip on Olivia tightens to the point of pain. Olivia’s eyes fill with a sympathetic burn of their own. 

All of her children have had nightmares, of course – she’s spent many nights holding each of them as they cried, carding her fingers through their hair and talking to them quietly until they drifted off – but none of the others have experienced anything like this. None of the others have been plagued so thoroughly by their dreams, had the same spectres appear over and over and render them inconsolable.

She doesn’t know what to do. 

By the time she reaches the upstairs hallway, Nellie’s sobbing has slowed down, although it continues to jerk her body. Pausing at the top of the steps and readjusting Nellie’s weight onto her hip and one arm, Olivia gently brushes some of Nellie’s fine hair away from her round face. Her cheeks and nose are shiny with tears. 

“Do you want to sleep with us tonight? With me and your dad?” It feels like a bandage for the problem, a quick fix that won’t actually do anything in the grand scheme of things, but frankly, she’s tired, her head hurts, and she wants Nellie to get some rest. It will probably be a bit of a tight fit, having all three of them in their narrow bed, but she’s sure that they can make it work for one night.

Nellie nods, and Olivia gently presses a kiss to her forehead. 

“Okay. If he’s sprawled out like a starfish, we’ll tickle him until he moves.” 

A tiny huff of a giggle leaves Nellie’s mouth, and Olivia is so overjoyed that she forgets about the pain in her head for a moment. 

Thankfully, Hugh is contained on his side of the bed, facing away from them. He stirs briefly when Olivia sets Nellie down on the bed, mumbles something in return to Nellie’s quiet “Hi, Daddy”, but by the time Olivia slides underneath the covers, he’s gone still again. Between them, Nellie wriggles under the blankets until only the top of her head is exposed, and Olivia presses another kiss into her crown and inches over so that she doesn’t feel like she’s going to fall off the bed. Closing her eyes, she can tell that it won’t be long before she drifts off to sleep herself. 

She’s tired. Dog-tired. 

(Now where has she heard that recently?)

“Mommy?” Nellie whispers, the word puffing against Olivia’s collarbone. 

“Yes, sweetheart?” It takes an inordinate amount of effort to push the words from her lips.

“What if she comes back?” It takes Olivia a few moments to answer – she knows what she wants to say, but the words keep floating out of her head as soon as she thinks of them, like they’re drifting and bobbing on the surface of the ocean. Eventually, she manages to hook them. 

“Then we’ll keep you safe.” 

It feels like a lie. 

Just as she feels the embrace of sleep wrapping her in its arms, something in the room creaks, and she instinctively opens her eyes, in case it’s another one of her children come to crawl into bed with them. 

She’s in her reading room, slumped over in her armchair, the air filled with the smell of her lemon balm tea. When she glances across the room, the woman looks up from the book spread across her lap and smiles at her. 

Poppy. Her name is Poppy. Of course it is. Olivia must have just forgotten. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says, sitting up straight, wincing at the stiffness of her neck, and taking a sip of her cold tea. “I must have drifted off.” 

“Looked like you was having one heck of a screaming meemie,” Poppy says, closing the book with a quiet thump and setting it on the floor. Getting to her feet, silk dress falling down to her ankles, she offers Olivia a hand. “Let’s check on your little ones. You can tell me about the dream on the way.” 

Smiling, Olivia takes Poppy’s hand without a second thought. As she gets to her feet, a yawn splits her smile in half, and she hastens to bury it into the crux of her elbow. Once it has faded away, she says, “I’m so sorry. I’m just so _tired_.” 

“I know, doll,” Poppy says, squeezing Olivia’s hand tightly and leading her out of the room. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
